Presentation

H2Ooooh Project

“H2Ooooh!” is a new initiative, devised by Gruppo Alcuni in collaboration with the UNESCO Venice Office and Rai Fiction, on cartoon animation, which involves children from all over Italy. The aim is to create a storyboard (or in other words a series of drawings representing the main scenes of a cartoon) on the theme of water and the issues related to its use, to its exploitation and to its limited supply.
The project has been carried out during the 2008-2009, 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 scholastic years and is aimed at all teachers open to participating in a creative activity on the theme of water with their Primary or early Secondary school classes.
The participating schools will receive, free of charge, all the materials necessary (videos, books, etc) in order to embark upon an educational course on the language of cartoon animation.
From the storyboards received so far, 26 have been selected and transformed into short 1 minute animated films. The cartoons have been created by professional animators using the children's original drawings and were broadcast on Rai Due in May and June of 2010 (27% of shares).
This project on one hand allows children to learn about the language of animated cartoons, on the other hand it also encourages a greater understanding of an extremely important issue which is the situation of water resources in our world today.
The children involved in the project, along with their teachers, will be given the opportunity, through specially created educational materials, to go through the whole production process of an animated cartoon.
They will learn how to write a story, to script it, to draw the characters, choosing frames and camera movements and also how to create a storyboard.
The kids involved will be able to develop, from a cognitive point of view, the problems related to the water resources of our planet. Science becomes fun and is taught to children by children! “H2Ooooh!” is based on the concept of a “culture for childhood”, this is the culture of “doing”, of doing things today and doing them together. This must be demonstrated through concrete facts, starting from the assumption that we, as adults, are the ones directly responsible for the Present and the Future of younger generations.
Due to the impressive success of this initiative amongst Italian children, evident in the enthusiastic participation of so many schools and in the quality of the material sent by over 400 classes, it was decided to propose the project to other UNESCO member states in order to diffuse it on an international level.
The more countries that participate, the more it will be possible to have a global vision of this theme. “H2Ooooh!” was presented in Paris, during the 35th UNESCO General Conference, in order to promote scientific knowledge and learning among young people around the world.
Gruppo Alcuni and the UNESCO Venice Office have the pleasure of offering, free of charge, all the material used to date and the “know how” of the project (graphic material, publicity segments, etc…) to enable others to carry out the H2Ooooh initiative.
For further information on the project please consult the website (which includes the storyboards of the cartoons already created). There is also a blog which allows for an exchange of ideas on how the project is developing in every single country. www.h2ooooh.org